It contained, in an almost throwaway line, the following fact: ‘Last night, a Tunisian Interior Ministry source said that while [the Sousse murderer Seifeddine] Rezgui did not have a criminal record, he was known to authorities for "low level radicalism" and was once stopped by police for smoking cannabis.’

Just in case anyone thinks I played any part in this, they are very much mistaken. The reporter on the spot (we still do that on the MoS) discovered the fact and recorded it, unprompted by me and unknown to me.

Now, I suspect you’d have to be pretty dogged about smoking cannabis in Tunisia for the police to bother you or keep a record of it. So I doubt if this was a first offence.

So what?

Well, so, there seems to be a bit of a pattern here.

Let me just restate: the culprits of the 2011 Tucson massacre,at which Congreswoman Gabrielle Giffords was terribly wounded and six people died, the culprits of the beheading of Jennifer Mills Westley in Tenerife, of the beheading of Mrs Palmira Silva in London, of the grotesque murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, of the Charlie Hebdo and related killings in Paris, of the killings of two Canadian soldiers in the past year, of the bludgeoning to death of Sheffield church organist Alan Greaves, not to mention a large number of other notably violent and deranged, irrational crimes ( see: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/07/high-and-violent.html ) have all been revealed to be cannabis users. Now this killer has been revealed to be a cannabis user too.

What does this mean? What claim am I making?

It means that there appears to be a correlation between the use of this drug and violent, irrational acts, a correlation so strong and so frequently observed in prominent events that it seems to me that we need a proper inquiry to see if it is significant. We know about the correlation because such horrors are much more intensively covered by the media and investigated by the authorities than other crimes. It is reasonable to contend that if other, less noteworthy crimes of violence were subjected to the same scrutiny, similar correlations might well emerge.

It’s not the only such correlation. There is, for instance, a well-established and widely-acknowledged correlation between alcohol and violence, so strong that we all accept unhesitatingly that causation is involved - which is not disputed and which nobody needs to point out. Imagine, though, if the powerful alcohol lobby and its willing dupes waged a campaign against any journalist who sought to suggest such a correlation. That's how it is with cannabis. Just say this and a howling storm of lies and abuse will gather round your head.

This correlation informs the law’s attitude (criminal and civil) towards alcohol, and the media’s attitude, and our culture’s attitude. But at present there is a widespread belief in our culture that cannabis is harmless, and that it promotes peaceful and indeed passive behaviour. If this were to be found to be untrue, the attitudes of law, media and culture would need to change quite sharply.

Above all, the highly successful and well-funded campaign for cannabis legalisation would face a new and serious hurdle, just as it seemed to be in sight of success. This point explains the large number of vituperative and unresponsive comments this information will attract here and has already attracted on Twitter.

The correlation is significant because the drug is indisputably mind-altering, which is why people take it.

It is significant because it is also correlated with mental disturbance in general .

This is why such remarks as ‘these killers all breathed air’, or ‘ these killers all had eggs for breakfast’ are childish obfuscation. Air and eggs don’t alter the mind, cannabis does. That’s why the correlation is potentially meaningful rather than coincidental.

So, am I saying that everyone who smokes cannabis is a mass killer? Of course not, though, again, the cannabis comment warriors will be quick to suggest that this is my case, in the hope of fooling as many people as they can.

I am suggesting that these worrying and frightening instances are extreme examples of a general problem which is quite serious in its mildest form: that cannabis is correlated with the unpredictable alteration of the personality of those who use it.

This would surely put a stop to any talk of general legalisation of this drug. It would also damage its cunningly-created image as a ‘soft’ drug, and as a potential medicine. What’s ‘soft’ about a lifetime on the locked ward, or taking powerful antipsychotic drugs? Nothing. Who’d take a medicine with such potential side-effects? Only a fool.

Causation is extremely problematic here for two reasons. The first is that our knowledge of the workings of the brain, and of the relation between brain and mind, are almost unbelievably scanty and crude.

Trying(for instance) to draw conclusions about a person’s thinking or mental states from brain scans is like trying to work out what someone is saying in the Dog and Duck in Hampstead by studying a satellite picture of London by night. The brain does indeed alter physically after many experiences, from learning the ‘Knowledge’(the London Taxi drivers’ demanding test of their detailed knowledge of London streets) to taking drugs. But that is all we know. The brain alters. We can say *that* this has happened. But we are stuck to explain how, or why, or what it means.

And ,as James Davies points out in detail in his book ‘Cracked’, the diagnosis of mental illness is amazingly flexible, vague and subjective.

It may even be that, in the end, correlation (the basic tool of epidemiology, after all) is what we are left with. Those who wish to claim there’s nothing to be learned from these coincidences will chant ’Correlation is not Causation’, like a brigade of Red Guards singing the praises of Chairman Mao.

But we can say softly back ‘Indeed it is not. But correlation is also not necessarily *not* causation, either’.

And we can say, after the horrors of Sousse, and the many lesser horrors being played out among young people, in this country whose cannabis use has been followed by many and various disturbing symptoms, that those who listen to warnings are wiser than those who ignore them.

And that, with a billion-dollar market about to open up before their eyes, and a huge tax take as well, those who try to silence such warnings may not have the purest of motives.

Well I can hardly disagree with you as I've had my own issues with 'nutrition' and allergies and intollerances. But that is almost a seperate issue, except when speaking holisticly it is as you say of equal importance.

I do think 'industry' is the right word as well. There is an ussumption you can buy good health by eating the 'right' foods and taking correct 'suppliments' etc. I'm not fully convinced. A decent diet isnt so hard or expensive to achieve. Nor can you drink your way to health with expensive bottles of water! etc etc etc

Yes on a purely physical level those things are important, who could say different? But the mind is more complicated than that isnt it? What of trauma, of internal conflicts? Environment? History? Bad memories which affect the present even if you cant bring them to consciousness?

Everyone is different. Personally I dont think we are purely physical beings. (or as I sometimes put it, a walking bag of chemical reactions which can be put back in ballance by taking a pill, or even a dietry check up)

But even that works sometimes! Different people have different needs. And timing affects things too! I dont know why this is I just know it is so.

What I mean is that nutrition is so important for so many people with addiction problems that the people you speak of who relapse, might not if their nutritional issues were properly diagnosed and dealt with.

You can search on PubMed for various papers linking alcohol addiction with folate deficiency and executive function issues, i.e. poor executive function causes behavioural problems because it damages areas of the brain involved with self-control.

Really, IMHO, so many problems stem from inadequate nutrition combined with negligent medical care with dubious drugs which can actually cause and/or exacerbate the nutritional deficiencies many people have that it is shocking so little attention is paid to it. That is, unless you consider the economic activity involved in dealing with the consequences and the people who would lose their jobs and businesses if there were fewer addicts, prisoners, patients, etc., etc.

Well put like that Brian .I cannot argue , other than in the age when theism is challenged. Living ones life on credit seems the right thing to do ,hedonism verses a life of chastity. Leaving it all to ones offspring, who then might throw it away in a similar manner.
But even so is this the majority. I think not . I'm mortgage free. in fact my very first purchase on credit was recently when I purchased a lease on a car. I know that's not majority either . but your view is a bleak one that's for sure.
Funny money creates funny spending . what came first.?

I didn't add I wouldn't choose to go back there, even then, never mind now.

Reading your post about affording holidays and sense of entitlement that I agree with Brian Meredith on it mixes the two. The benefit claimant who thinks they are owed and deliberately abuses the system and the living on credit to get what you want now, because you have a sense of entitlement.
When I think about my mum's generation, it was a holiday in an English B&B or a week at Butlins, or at a static caravan site.
Growing up I remember a simple beach holiday in a wooden bungalow on the beach, quiet, simple, most of that beach now a yacht club, times have changed!
Yet when my aunt and uncle adopted me, they couldn't afford a holiday. It was trips to London, or days out, with pack up on the beach.
When my children were young, we took them to mum's beach hut, (before they became so posh you need a mortgage to buy one).
We had two holidays in a cottage in the Yorkshire dales.
That was mid 80's.
Even though cheap package holidays started, many people were afraid of credit and they did what they could afford.
Since the explosion of credit, "putting it on the card", there has been a falseness of wealth.
It spreads and doesn't help those on low wages when they live in this false economy.

Mike Barnes:
When I wrote of an entitlements culture I wasn't referring to state benefits. No, the entitlement culture infects working people even more than the unemployed. Their inflated sense of entitlement has resulted in the utterly preposterous levels of personal debt this country has racked up, as people use credit cards, personal loans and even the remortgaging of their houses in order to spend on themselves billions of pounds they haven't earned, "because I'm worth it".
The tragedy is that this is made to seem reasonable behaviour by an economic system that records the unsustainable spending of fictitious money created out of thin air by the banks as 'economic growth'. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this is unsustainable, and if any one should be too thick to imagine the consequences for themselves, we have the whole sorry tale of Greece to enlighten us, so there's really no excuse.

Mike Barnes "But back to the real poor .those that work for minimum wage."

Even a few pound an hour above the minimum range, it is still not enough to live on. No chance if you have a family. The working poor is a reality the masses are going to have to get used to if we are going to compete with China and the far east.

@ Elaine
Mr Merediths claims would make sense to most . Benefits here in Britain are the main reason the world wishes to come here . But like most things its not that simple.
There are benefit claimants . and benefit cheats. Those one sees frolickling around in some exotic hot spot are the latter . Who claim benefits they are not entitled to. and generally work in the black economy . Whilst those that generally are true claimants don't. The percentages that are cheats .No one knows. My Son who is a proper claimant hasn't had a holiday , other than those paid for entirely by m,e for twenty years. Has been waiting for a suitable house for 15 years.
Whilst homeless Romanians jump the queue.
But back to the real poor .those that work for minimum wage. Those save their pennies go without. for just a week or two in a place where the weather is not an issue . In fact its cultural. The Brits have always been the type that like a change of scenery . Elaine your lucky . America offers that change of scenery without having to fly. Breathtaking geography just a few hundred miles drive.. Here traffic queues if we have a nice weekend.
But again its all subjective . Where do those that live in what we think are idyllic areas, spend their vacation times. A change of scenery is a good thing . Rich or poor.

@ Jerry Owen
Death by a thousand evasions . When PH voiced his opinionon the Lee Rigby killers .That blog was almost entirely contrary to his version . Cannabis was the main reason, that was his claim without a doubt .
But this is how his mind works . Had they been just Skunk smokers with no religious affiliation .One must argue Lee Rigby woulkd still be alive. They might well have become murderous. But the victim would probably be one in a opposing gang. not the inoccent . But Lee rigby was not an innocent in the eyes of Islamic clerics. A Member of those fighting against the islamic cause. Cannabis was just an aside like a pint or a vodka and tonic . before going home and kicking the dog .
That why his detractors detract. Just like a bull terrier who when biting the nose of the bull cannot easily be got off . He says he is open to debate . but in reality isnt.. On a lot of subjects hes spot on , and yes cannabis is not a soft drug . But its what nullifies his arguements on other topics. He is Peter Hitchens. not Littlejohn or Clarkson . If fact he cares not a jot what people think of him.
That could be an interesting topic in itself. Still Hitchens is on record , he cares not what i say or think. It make me wonder why . I trump him most of the time. He is a jonny come lately in the Immigration rows. Me a veteran, that in all aspects was and is proven correct.

Well if what you are getting at is a more holistic approach to whatever 'getting better' constitutes I'm all for it. But nutrition only applies to part of 'body mind and spirit'.

Also the rehab I was at had a program which brings an individual through different stages of a process. Many people 'relapse'. (but can get 'back on the horse' so to speak when ready) Many others dont... They move through the program and are in a different 'place' when they are done. Issues need to be addressed and It is not always straight forward but for many many people it works.

Oh and by the way it worked with people who have been homeless many years. Medical check ups, visit to the dentist and getting eyes tested were all part of the package.

Peter Hitchens inserted his own comment within mine two days ago. I responded by asking him to post a link to his blog on the killers of Lee Rigby where PH refutes Islam is the issue, but drugs are. He chose not to post my reply.
To not allow the right of response, shows either lack of argument or a disregard of etiquette.
What a sad blog this has become.

PH writes: Contributors really must stop accusing me without evidence. It is true that this contribution by Mr Owwn wasn't published, but I have no idea why (the likelihood is that the problems with Typepad, which have been discussed here, made it look as if it was a multiple posting) and I had nothing to do with it.

Here, anyway, si the missing post:

I refer PH to his blog on the Islamic killers of Lee Rigby ( I can't give a date but presume it must have been at the trial ). He emphasises the drug angle to the pretty much if not total exclusion of Islam. Perhaps he could link to that particular article. I seem to recall he received some wrath on that particular blog. Unfortunately I can't find it in ....*the index* !

***And PH replies: This isn't exactly devastating. If I *had* censored it I would have been stupid to do so. To emphasise one cause of an event or one explanation is not to say that there is no other influence on the event. My point was then, and is now, that to attribute the Rigby killing to some sort of Islamist conspiracy( as much of the media has done) is a ludicrous misunderstanding of a crime mainly attributable to the severe mental illness of the perpetrators.

AS for 'total exclusion'
Let's try it this way:

Was the killer's choice of victim influenced by their Islamic beliefs?
Probably.
Had they not been Muslims, would they have killed someone else under a different pretext?
Almost certainly
Had they not been mentally ill, would they have killed anyone at all?
Almost certainly not.
Therefore their adherence to Islam, while playing a part, was not the central question.

How do I reach these conclusions? By adducing several cases of grotesquely violent murders involving obscene mutilations of the victim using knives, including beheadings conducted by persons who were not Muslims but who were insane and who were known drug abusers. I have not been able to find comparable cases in which the killers were Muslims but *not* drug abusers.

If anyone wishes to argue against this, I'd be obliged if they'd do so without trying to claim that I'm excusing Islamic fanaticism, or any similar rubbish. It's demonstrably false and I have no such aim. And can someone explain to Mr Owen that to say that a) is the principal cause of something is not to say that b) or c) played no part in it. It is to say that a) was the principal cause. no more, no less. ***

Apparently the CIA spiked the entire Nixon team with LSD on a visit to the Soviet Union. Even worse, according to the Daily Mail last year the CIA planned to assassinate Nixon twice. The CIA obtained a gun and hired an assassin, but he refused to proceed when he found out who his target was. When both plots failed, writes author Roger Stone, the CIA settled for driving Nixon out of office by sabotaging the Watergate break-in.

Huxley wrote a book after taking LSD called Heaven and Hell. The implication is obvious, he was following his grandfathers strategy of hijacking Christian terminology, the warfare model. It is surely about time the Huxley family are exposed for the frauds they are? People like that deceive millions.

As for the CIA, clearly their dream is to start another religion that they control.

I've no experience of rehab in either capacity but I can imagine that it's much like medicine in general: they can't really afford to have their "clients" get better in case the business dries up and so actually dealing with the underlying health issues is anathema.

I think, however, enough people are beginning to twig to the real underlying causes of these issues that they will be unable to ignore them for much longer. People are demanding that they be tested and treated for nutritional deficiencies, taking responsibility for their own health rather than delegating it to these so-called professionals who really don't have their best interests at heart.

" Remember the Yorkshire ripper heard "God telling him to do it"? Or did the profession want him to say this and he played along? "

Very bad, but in the overall scheme of things rather amateurish compared to Tony Blair (he who was gracious enough to grant the Pope an audience!) -- and some would add Iain Duncan Smith, although in his case it's actually known which iffy US-multinational twiddles the sanctimonious electrodes of his Dalek mentality.

@ Mrs B
Your posts are smaller of late. That said, times have changed. Once tourists just got mugged. Now they get killed.
The very first was at Luxor on the Egytian Nile. How long ago was that.. Yet Sharm is now a tourist hot spot . As long as you can live without bacon on your all inclusive breakfast.
First time I went I was mugged out of a pack of cigerettes by two heavily armed policemen whilst still in the airport. . Still better then, than this now

The U.S. government really has been conducting a top-secret UFO conspiracy - only one designed not to hide UFOs but publicise them, fuelling and even creating the major UFO myths. Flying saucers, alien abductions, crash-landed spacecraft, secret underground bases in New Mexico - they were all created by the CIA and were manipulated into quasi religious channeling cults (just the sort of thing the CIA seems to like).

Brian Meredith "'A Course in Miracles' supposedly channeled directly from God, were themselves working for the CIA "

>
It is not just your generation who has been hoodwinked by the CIA, in the mid 1990s I read a book by Timothy Good, called Above Top Secret, a best seller at the time about UFOs in which his sources were supplying him with info claiming that the US government were in touch with aliens and they had an important message for mankind etc etc, (the usual stuff).

Turns out his sources supplying him were CIA. Now why would the CIA be interested in creating yet another sub culture I wonder in which God is an alien controlled by the CIA? Whats next, I wonder?

Many thanks for responding. I'm not much interested in the pharmacology myself, more in the socio-political implications of a project that literally changed the world. To someone from that generation (I was 20 in 1968) the revelations about the origins and true purpose of that whole counter-culture scene are quite extraordinary.

If the facts are correct - and there does seem to be good, hard evidence for this - the CIA project subsidised the recording costs of the Grateful Dead's first album (!!!), the two authors of that New-Age bible 'A Course in Miracles' supposedly channeled directly from God, were themselves working for the CIA (!!!) and Carlos Castaneda's books, supposedly first hand anthropological forays into the Mexican Indian religious peyote and mushroom cults and which still sell in large numbers today, were themselves entirely made up (!!!) .

For anyone who still waxes nostalgic for the 'achievements' of the sixties drug culture - which means just about everyone in the media aged over 55 (with the notable exception of our host, of course) - these revelations should represent the walls of the temple crashing down. Come to think of it there's been little coverage of this subject in the mainstream media. Hmmm, I wonder why. Well, there's none so blind as those who do not wish to see and I imagine that facing up to the revelation that the whole sixties 'freedom' thing was nothing more than an experiment in mass manipulation must be even harder than admitting that the Earth itself was originally commissioned from Slarty Bardfast by the mice.

Huxley is part of the same conspiracy to destroy Christianity and the truth of real spiritual experiences as the medical profession that formed around that time. Huxley tried to claim LSD experience was spiritual experience and the medical industry began insisting our own internal voices we all experience were new forms of "mental illness".
Of course, we all can “hear” a voice in our head when we “talk to ourselves”. And we can “see” things when we imagine them or remember them. We all hear voices and see “things that aren’t there” when we dream, voice and visions that we do not consciously create and some people have waking dreams.

The medical profession imbue mentally disturbed people to personify these voices and trick them into believing they are "hearing voices" in some way comparable to the Biblical prophets. This is a trick of language and cohesion in which the mentally ill person willingly plays apart. If you get someone the medical profession says are hearing voices on their own and press them, as I have, whether they really know these voices or characters are just themselves, they will admit they do. Remember the Yorkshire ripper heard "God telling him to do it"? Or did the profession want him to say this and he played along?

Aldous Huxley was promoting LSD, his brand message "the doors of perception" led to countless youths searching for a spiritual meaning by taking LSD, just as he intended in his crusade to destroy the truth of real spiritual experiences and those accounts in the Bible, which he obviously had realized was the real reason Christianity would not die. The pagans used to take similar drugs and have similar colourful drug induced experiences which are nothing like real spiritual experiences, modern culture has tricked people into believing this is so as part of (the Huxley families warfare model).

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